


Here Be Dragons

by Glinda



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: Dragons, F/M, Secret Santa
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-21
Updated: 2010-01-21
Packaged: 2017-10-06 13:00:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/53933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Glinda/pseuds/Glinda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's a dragon attacking the castle. Maybe if Hermione says it enough it'll sink in properly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Here Be Dragons

After the war, Hermione had needed to get away. As dear to her as her friends were, she, Ron and Harry had been living in each other's pockets for the best part of the last eight years. Almost everything she thought herself to be was defined in relation or opposition to one or both of the boys. She'd just needed time on her own, to figure out who she was without them. In fairness, the boys had been good about it: they hadn't wanted her to go off on her own but they understood why she needed to do it. She was glad she had talked them into going back to school for seventh year. That last year together had given them a chance to indulge the part of them all that wanted to cling to each other desperately and never let go. They'd won: now they could get on with the rest of their lives.

So, here she was, in Prague, taking a very muggle gap year teaching English to Czech teenagers and figuring out what she was going to do with her life. Perhaps it was because her early teens had been so very fraught with adventure that plunging head first into a new culture and language was soothing rather than intimidating. Wandering round the cobbled streets of the old city, laughing and mixing up her verbs as she chatted to strangers in the café down the road, visiting museums and memorials, sipping hot wine as she browsed the markets while snow fell softly around her - it was less than a thousand miles from home, yet she felt freer and calmer than she could ever remember. Reading the boys' letters from home, full of anecdotes from Auror training and plans for their own 'muggle' adventure, a road trip across the USA this coming summer, she wondered how she could ever explain this to them.

When she'd decided to head off to Eastern Europe the previous summer, Ron had put her in touch with his older brother Charlie, who in turn had set her up with a volunteering placement at a Croatian griffin sanctuary. She'd been surprised to find the place almost entirely staffed by muggles, until she realised they all thought they were taking care of griffin vultures rather than the magical variety. It was a quite impressive use of memory charms to change only one very important part of the volunteers' memories without damaging anything, and just went to prove that no one actually read the disclaimers before they signed them.

She and Charlie had kept in sporadic contact, owling back and forth about classroom disasters (Hermione) and proper care and feeding of dragons (Charlie). Considering that she barely knows Charlie, it's a little strange to find herself looking forward to his letters as much as she does. Maybe it's as simple as the fact that, other than a vague illusion to having colleagues from Prague if she needs pub recommendations, he's never mentioned her having avoided getting involved in the magical community of the city. Perhaps it's just because he's part but not part of their life at home. Charlie-who-is-far-away elicits a baffled affection from everyone else, but now that she is Hermione-who-is-far-away, she feels a kind of kinship. They don't discuss what she's going to do next year, which is a shame because she thinks he might be the only person who doesn't presume she's going home.

Life is never boring. Teaching is challenging and fluency in Czech eludes her, so when adventure rears its head on a long weekend in Brno she is, frankly, quite amazed by how eager for it she is.

When she wakes up on Saturday morning and looks out the window, there is a dragon attacking the castle. It takes her a moment to realise that she's not in the middle of a surreal nightmare, and that this is actually happening, before she can react. Two years of peace inspired laziness burn away as old habits kick in and she's dressed, armed and out the door before her brain has fully adjusted to the idea that there is a dragon attacking the castle. Out in the bright spring air, she heads directly for the pub down the road that she'd purposefully ignored the day before due to the way no one else seemed to notice it. She's giving it her full attention now, hammering on the door loudly enough to wake the dead, or at least the landlord. He answers, looking bemused, and the words she'd learnt by rote before she'd even left home fall out of her mouth, steady and sure the way she can never normally get her Czech to sound.

"I'm sorry, this is an emergency. I need to use your fireplace."

"Of course you may," he answers in perfect English, letting her in, "what is wrong?"

Normally at this point Hermione would stubbornly continue in Czech, but really her language tapes hadn't covered useful phrases for when dragons derail your holiday plans, so she gives in gratefully.

"There's a dragon setting fire to the castle. I know a Dragon Keeper. Please, there isn't much time."

He stares at her for a long moment before nodding and indicating the small urn beside the fireplace that holds the floo powder. "Your friend may come through this way if it's easier."

"Thank you," she replies quietly, before spinning back into action and calling up the floo address she never expected to need. Floo calling has always disorientated her, but the chaos she looks into doesn't help settle her. Three or four dragon keepers are rushing around readying equipment, among them Charlie Weasley.

"Hermione," he exclaims at her, "as much of an unexpected pleasure as this is, your call couldn't have come at a less convenient moment. We're having something of a crisis here at the moment. One of our…"

"Charlie!" interrupts one of his colleagues, looking at him askance.

"Dragons is missing?" Hermione guesses aloud. The two Dragon Keepers turn to stare at her in horror as though they know what she's about to say next. "It's attacking the castle." A tiny part of Hermione wonders whether if she says it enough times it will start to feel real.

"A dragon is attacking Praha castle?" asks Charlie's colleague, face ashen and accent now both obvious and familiar. This must be Damek of the pub recommendations and useful phrases.

"No, Brno," Hermione reassures him. Damek relaxes a little, nods and begins organising with renewed vigour. To Charlie, who is glancing concernedly at his colleague, Hermione continues, "about 130 miles east of Prague."

Charlie nods and replies equally vaguely, "I don't know anyone in Bristol but I'd hate it to be flamed to the ground by dragons…"

Hermione takes his point.

Only after her floo call is finished and she knows that Charlie and his team are on their way does she allow herself to think about the people in the castle. About the chatty teenage boy on the ticket desk, barely older than Hermione herself, or the tour guards who looked like they'd escaped from the Czech version of the WI with their multi-lingual cards and cheerful asides, or the lady in the cloakroom with whom, due to a linguistic misunderstanding, she'd ended up chatting with in German. If she closes her eyes for a moment they burn there a thousand different ways. Something of her thoughts must show on her face for the landlord takes down a bottle of firewhisky and offers her a glass. She declines, sinking into a seat instead; she needs a clear head if she's going to be any help to the dragon keepers when they arrive. The landlord looks at her steadily for a long moment before asking "British?" She nods, not really comprehending what that has to do with anything, and he disappears through the back, returning a few minutes later with what turns out to be the best cup of tea she's had since the tea bags she brought from home ran out.

"I owled our fire brigade," he says abruptly, "they are pleased to know that the Dragon Keepers are on their way."

She appreciates what he's doing more than she can say. All things considered he's taken her pretty much breaking down his door and commandeering his fireplace rather well. She offers her hand, a little awkwardly.

"Hermione," she says simply.

"Dusan," he replies, smiling a little.

Pushing aside the flaming images behind her eyes, she casts about for a topic of conversation.

"You went to Durmstrang, right?" she asks. His expression darkens at that so she ploughs on before he can respond, "I had a…friend, Viktor, who went there. Good man, very brave. He was from Bulgaria; he talked about there being another old Wizarding School that closed back before Grindlewald. He didn't know a lot about it; just that the school was 'lost' and so was its name. I've looked for more information on it since, but other than that it was lost, and that it was either in what's now eastern Czech Republic or western Hungary, I couldn't find any."

" The old Hapsburg school," Dusan responds happily.

The best Hermione had hoped for was a history lesson. What she gets is a lecture on the movement to find or reform the lost school, so that wizarding children from eastern Europe are not forced to travel to the frozen north to Durmstrang or else face the distain of gentile judging Beauxbatons. Dusan tells her of how the school was founded, its founders coming together in the early days of empire from the different peoples, seeking to unite the wizards and witches in the face of this new and often hostile muggle state. Of the school that had grown there, expanding its catchment area along with the empire and beyond as the Durmstrang Institute increasingly became the seat of the dark arts. Finally of the terrible curse that had fallen upon it as the empire crumbled around it, erasing the school's name from all memory and record. By the time the Dragon Keepers put in an appearance Hermione has decided that as soon as she gets back to Prague she's seeking out the magical community and seeing what she can do to help.

They apparate to the bottom of the hill with their equipment, much easier from closer quarters, and from there head up the hill. The four dragon keepers spread out around the castle and Dusan heads towards the fire-fighters to act as liaison. Charlie gestures to Hermione to follow him and she does.

"Watch my back, yeah?" he says quirking a smile at her, "Dusan might have been the Durmstrang duelling champion for all I know, but I've no idea what he's like in a proper crisis. I've fought alongside you before; I can trust you to keep your head and do what needs to be done when the prat that let this beauty out realises that I raised this dragon from an egg."

"And being the type who takes a dragon to attack an undefended castle full of muggle civilians," responds Hermione dryly, "you probably reckon he's going to underestimate a girl."

"Well, if he plays entirely to type, frankly yes," Charlie gives her a full on grin. "Must be years since someone's underestimated you, Miss Granger. They say Dolores Umbridge still flinches at the sound of hoof beats."

Hermione knows a backwards Weasley compliment when she gets one, so she returns his smile, and they shake hands on their plan of action.

She keeps a careful watch out while Charlie lays some groundwork spells to give himself something to fall back on later. Close up, the dragon, a Swedish Shortsnout according to Charlie, is as beautiful as she is terrifying, and Hermione tries not to be distracted by her looming iridescent blue presence. As soon as a shifty looking character makes an appearance they put the plan into action.

It's an atrocious bit of overacting, conducted entirely in stage whispers, but despite Hermione being quite sure that even the dragon is laughing at them, their quarry is entirely taken in. As he gets within range they ramp up their fake lover's tiff, and Charlie swings her into his arms and pretends to snog her silly.

"My little brother," murmurs Charlie against her cheek, "is an unappreciative idiot, you know that right?"

"I was under the impression," Hermione mutters back at him, "that you liked your women fire-breathing."

"Just fierce," he replies, grinning hugely.

It is necessary, Hermione feels, to kiss that stupid grin off his face properly, before spinning herself out of his arms and smacking their unsuspecting stalker in the chest with a stunner at close range, sending him flying backwards. Her grin when her opponent finally looks up is decidedly more predatory.

The wizard nominally controlling the dragon, Hermione doesn't ask his name, as he has done nothing to deserve the courtesy, plays entirely to type, right down to the dubious facial hair and the monologue. There's a certain amount of fun in having a running battle through a castle, amazingly not old hat after all this time, except that he keeps running away. He's laughably easy to defeat in a straight duel, and yet irritatingly even after she's cornered him, disarmed him and tied him up, he still doesn't take her seriously. She has no choice. She makes judicious use of Levicorpus and directs him through the castle's corridors upside down until they reach the fire-fighters. She's got him the right way up again by the time the Aurors show up and by now he has the sense not to taunt her. Well, almost, he seems unable to resist a 'send a woman to do a man's job' jibe as the Dragon Keepers, dragon safely contained, come to join them. If she takes a certain satisfaction in reminding him that the dragon's name is Persephone and of how unwise it would be to cross that particular lady, well, she's only human.

In the end, the damage to the castle is much less than it might have been. The tower takes the worst of it, and the magical disasters team from the Czech Ministry of Magic manage to repair the worst damage, leaving only a little fire damage to support the cover story about an arsonist. The dragon had turned up too early in the morning for most of the staff to be on site yet, so the injuries were confined to a couple of security guards with minor burns. Thankfully they'd had the sense, on seeing a dragon setting fire to their workplace, to run quickly in the opposite direction and phone 112.

Hermione, for her part, was feeling oddly elated. She'd forgotten how much fun adventure could be, back before Voldemort had sucked all the joy out of it. Additionally, she appeared to be holding hands with Charlie Weasley. It was irrational, it couldn't work, long distance had been the undoing of Viktor and her back in the day, but a little part of her whispered that there were probably plenty of teenagers in Bucharest who wanted to learn English. Besides she'd been thoroughly enthralled by Dusan's story about the campaign to resurrect the old Hapsburg School of Magic, they were going to need to find the place for a start and, well, at least a cause was something she could explain to her friends and family.

Perhaps it would work, perhaps it wouldn't, but for now there was bright spring sunshine, evil had been defeated and she had a date with a handsome young man who considered a slightly obsessive personality to be an attractive character trait rather than a defect. All in all, her weekend was going rather well.

**Author's Note:**

> I had great fun writing this, (even if I, like Hermione, had horrible visions of the fate that might befall the staff and had to ensure they were saved from an entirely fictional flamey death) I never thought I'd find away to work Spilberk Castle into fic but there you go.


End file.
